An Open Mind
by Cyranothe2nd
Summary: A SpockMcCoy challenge story written for 20th Wave. Details of challenge inside. This is a mm story, please don't read if you don't like.


**An Open Mind**

**By Cyranothe2nd**

**Set directly after the odious _Spock's Brain_. Paramount owns all, I am their humble bitch.**

**Rating: NC-17 for m/m pairing**

**Part of the 20th Wave. My challenge was "write a Spock/McCoy fic where a photograph is used to further the plot." I hope I did the challenge justice.**

**This is my first Trek fic, as well as my first slash. Feedback is welcome.**

"Now you listen up you pig-headed Vulcan, don't think I won't get the Captain involved if I have to!"

The eyebrow went up, damn him! "As I do not see your name on the shore leave roster, I do not think that you will carry out such a threat." The first officer stood with his hands clasped behind his back and regarded me across my desk. I wished, not for the first time, that I had never reconnected his mouth.

I gritted my teeth. "Spock," I said, trying for a reasonable voice and failing utterly. "You've been through hell these past few weeks. You need some time off."

"Despite your colorful use of religious idiom, I can assure you Doctor that I have no need for _time off_." I could hear the ironic quotation marks around the last two words.

"Really?" I challenged, punching a button on my desk. "This is your performance rating for the past 14 days," I motioned towards the screen. "See a pattern?"

"My performance is within acceptable limits," he said stiffly. I smiled sweetly at him and his mouth tightened, just a fraction.

"Acceptable?" I drawled. "I'm shocked." I let the sarcasm sink in for a moment before speaking again. "Look Spock, you've been acting differently ever since I got that brain of yours back in your head. You won't talk to Jim; you won't talk to me. You've been avoiding the both of us." His brow was on the rise again and I held out a hand to forestall the inevitable retort. "Don't bother denying it. If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine. But you _will_ go on shore leave, or I'll write it up in my medical log. Is that clear?"

Spock drew himself up and his voice was downright frosty when he said, "Perfectly, Doctor."

* * *

_I fail to see how imbibing alcohol will improve the situation, Doctor_, Spock's voice said in my head. I told it to shut up and poured. Damn him! It was bad enough he always had to go haring off after the Captain, getting himself hurt at every opportunity. He was almost as bad as Jim, always trying to be a goddamn hero. Between the two of them I thought I'd patched up every injury and healed every disease known to God and man. But this last time was different.

I swallowed another mouthful of the brandy and let it burn down my throat. The memory of Spock standing like an automaton with nothing at all in his eyes was burned into my mind. My hand shook as I set the glass back down. After everything we had been through, all the times I had nearly lost him, this one moment stands out from the others. Maybe its because he'd lost everything that made him so…Spock. His mind, that sharp instrument that could compute logarithms but still wonder at human frailty, that mind that I had come so much to rely on, admire, and yes, to love. To see it stripped from him was almost more than I could bear. It made me want to abandon every oath I'd made as a physician and tear that woman who had so carelessly stolen Spock's essence limb from limb. I wanted to take every bit of knowledge out of their damn Teacher and use it to save him. I wanted to take him into my arms and protect him from anything that could hurt him like that again.

The fierceness of my reaction was a surprise. I had never felt these things before, not with anyone - and it scared the hell out of me.

I was pouring myself another brandy when the door chime sounded.

"Come on in," I called. The door swished open and Jim came in. He took a look at my inebriated state and the fact that I had discarded both boots and shirt and gave me his trademark shit-eating grin.

"Well Doctor, you look…relaxed."

I snorted. "It's my quarters and I can be out of uniform if I want to. Drink?"

He nodded and I poured him a generous glass before refilling mine. Jim took a drink and sighed a little before sitting back. "Twenty seven?"

I shook my head and gestured at the bottle. "Twenty nine."

Jim took another drink and nodded. "I won't ask where you got it."

I grinned. "Probably best you don't." We sat in companionable silence for a minute before I set my glass down carefully and leaned back in my chair. "So," I said, "What's on your mind?"

The Captain took a long drink before answering. "I was actually hoping to ask you that."

I cocked my head to the side in a neat imitation of our resident Vulcan and said, "Now why would you think I had anything on my mind?"

Jim leveled his gaze at me. "Don't you, Bones?" You could call Jim Kirk many things, but unperceptive was not one of them.

I shrugged. "Nothing to tell," I muttered. It wasn't as though I was about to tell him that I was in love with our first officer. I could just imagine how that conversation would go-

_Well Bones, that's very interesting. I'll be sure to tell the doctor about it just before they throw you into the padded room. _It was crazy to want a green-blooded computer this much, and I damn well knew it. I wasn't about to give James Kirk the satisfaction of telling me so.

I pushed myself up from the chair. "It's late and I have to be in Sickbay in the morning."

Kirk didn't get up. "About that," he started and I felt my stomach sink. "I was looking over the roster of rotations for shore leave and noticed your name wasn't on it. Want to tell me why?"

I muttered something about being busy while my mind worked furiously.

"Look Jim, I'm sure Llyara's a beautiful place, but letting some aliens poke around in my brain is not my idea of a good time."

"Don't knock it 'til you've tried it," Kirk said. "I know the Llyaran pleasure palaces were the stuff of legend in my Academy days. I think half the boys in Fleet joined up on the hope of getting shore leave on Llyara. And you will be beaming down at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow morning."

I'd been backed into a corner and I knew it. I nodded in a less-than-graceful surrender and said goodnight to the Captain. It wasn't until I was lying in bed later that night that I realize what had happened. _That pointy-eared bastard! _He'd gotten his revenge on me after all.

* * *

The pleasure palace on Llyara was the tackiest thing I had ever seen. A hybrid of Earth architecture and Llyaran holographic technology, it glittered with all the chrome and neon of a 20th century Las Vegas casino. But gambling isn't what drew the crowds. Ships docked at the station to sample the forbidden fruits of fantasy. The technique was simple: You thought about what you wanted - any fantasy, any place - and the holo-generators created it for you. They even gave you a snapshot of your fantasy as a souvenir, printed on real paper to look like a photograph.

"Talk about infinite diversity," I muttered. I wondered what Spock was doing down here. Probably visiting the nearest library. Certainly not standing outside what amounts to a holographic brothel and thinking about just how real a fantasy can be. _Come on, Len_, I chided myself, _it's shore leave, not brain surgery._ I winced at my own bad pun and entered the building.

"The technology is simple," the Llyaran tech, a beautiful beige-furred woman, explained. She had come up to me within moments of my entering the establishment and set me at ease with her soft voice and accepting eyes. She would have made an excellent nurse. "You will put this band around your head so that the interfaces connect here and here." She pointed out the places the metal diodes needed to touch and put the harness-like apparatus over my head. "You will enter the holo-room there," she indicated one of a long row of identical doors. "There will be a ten unit delay after you enter the room. You should use that time to build your fantasy so the computer will know what you want."

"And then?"

The tech smiled, showing a set of small white fangs. "Then, ecstasy," she said seriously.

The door hissed closed behind me and I looked around the small bare room. Ecstasy. RightLooked more like a metal box to me. I walked to the back wall, barely the width of my cabin back on _Enterprise_. What was I doing here? Why was I…

There was a sudden rushing sensation, like running and falling simultaneously. I put out a hand to catch myself before I hit the deck and felt a strange softness instead of the metal floor.

I was standing in the bare room no longer. The walls had transmuted to green forest and my hand clutched the mossy trunk of an oak tree. The sound of running water bespoke the presence of a stream nearby. The smell of loam and earth filled my nostrils. I bent down and dug my fingers into the soil and smiled. I tilted my head and looked up at the canopy of oaks, and beyond it, blue sky. So real!

"Leonard, will you stand there all day and observe the sky, or will you join me?" I turned, feeling my heart flip over. Spock stood nearby; head canted to the side, the presence of a small smile hinting at the corners of his lips. He held out a hand to me and I took it, feeling warm flesh beneath my own. So real!

He pulled me closer and I leaned into him as he released my hand. I grabbed a fistful of his robe, pale green winter silk. I had never seen him wearing anything so frivolous, but I must have seen it somewhere, because this was my fantasy.

"Come," Spock said softly. I released him, trying to catch my breath. He strode off under the trees and I followed. We seemed to walk for half a meter, impossible in the tiny room I was in, but then it didn't matter. The sun was out and Spock was here.

The sound of water had grown louder as we walked and now I could see the stream, cutting through the clearing ahead. It seemed to be our destination because Spock slowed as we came to the bank and then halted. He shrugged off his outer robe and laid it on the ground, sinking gracefully onto it. I sat beside him, close enough to feel the heat of his body through the lighter inner robe he wore. It was darker green and the sigils of his house were threaded into the front in gold. It opened at the throat, revealing pale copper skin and the sight of his bare neck sent a coil of desire through me. I wanted to touch his skin, taste him and inhale his fragrance.

"You visited this place as a child, did you not?"

It took me a moment to realize that he had spoken. I looked around. "It is!" I exclaimed, suddenly recognizing the spot. "My dad used to bring me camping here when I was a kid. We slept by this stream on clear nights."

"Indeed," Spock murmured. "And you have chosen to bring me to this place."

"It was you that brought me," I broke in.

He turned to me and I shivered at how close he was to me. "Leonard, it is you that has evoked this place, not I."

I stared at him. "You know that this isn't real?"

Spock nodded.

"Do you…" I looked away, suddenly realizing how guilty I felt for playing with him, even in my head. "Do you mind?"

Long fingers lifted my chin. "I do not," he said, and kissed me.

I wondered as he kissed me how something that was not real could feel so wonderful. I wondered when he parted his robe how his bare skin could feel so good against my own. I wondered as my mouth moved over his body how I could ever live without this. And then my body shattered with pleasure and I couldn't wonder about anything at all.

* * *

I think I must have passed out. When I came back to my body I was in the bare room again. I laid there for long moment, collecting myself. I felt completely rung out, empty. I turned onto my side and squeezed my eyes closed to prevent the tears from coming. I'd been a fool to come here. I had thought that it would help. I had thought that if I could just live the fantasy, just once, that I could get over it. I couldn't have been more wrong. How could I go back to the ship and pretend like I'd never touched Spock? That I had never felt him inside of me?

_You didn't_, I told myself sternly. _None of this ever happened!_ I couldn't do this again. It was too real, too close to what I wanted and could never have. I would go back to the ship. Jim would be livid but that seemed better than living the temptation of staying here.

I forced myself to my feet and exited the room.

"Doctor, I trust you enjoyed your stay," the Llyaran tech greeted me.

I nodded, unable to speak. I had to get out of here.

"Here," the Llyaran said kindly and pressed an envelope into my hands. I frowned down at it. "A souvenir of your visit," she explained. I refrained from ripping it in half and instead opened the flap and glanced at it. The paper was heavy, like the cardstock my granny used to write letters on. I turned it over and Spock's face looked back at me. He was wearing the green inner robe and his eyes were dark and languid. I stuffed the picture back into the envelope, suppressing a sob. I had to get out of here before I made a complete fool of myself.

As I turned away I caught a bit of movement out of the corner of my eye. A tall figure dressed in soft green robes was coming out another door and heading towards me. His hair was brushed back from his temples, and he had done something to subtly change his features, but I knew that walk anywhere. I stopped dead and watched Spock coming towards me. He took two more steps and then seemed to notice me. He halted mid-stride and a strange look passed over his features. Then he whirled around and hastened towards the entrance.

"Sir!" A blue-furred Llyaran man called after him. "Your souvenir!" Spock didn't stop.

I stood for a moment, completely flabbergasted. I had never seen Spock so…what? Embarrassed? Discomfited?

The blue-furred tech was still holding Spock's envelope, shaking his head at the strangeness of Starfleet personnel.

"He's on my ship," I said suddenly. "I can give that to him."

The Llyaran handed the envelope to me and I took it before I could change my mind. I replayed the look that had come over Spock's face as I walked back to the shuttle area, but I was still as much at a loss when I finally arrived aboard _Enterprise_ as I'd been before. I retreated to my quarters and sank down in a chair, pouring myself two fingers of brandy. Both envelopes lay on the table in front of me. I took the one of Spock out and laid it down. And then, before I could talk myself out of it, I opened Spock's envelope and turned the card over—and almost dropped it out of shock.

It was dark, as though taken at night. The background images were nothing but shadows but one image burned pale and bright in the foreground; my own face and bare chest. An arm was holding me tightly to the dark body behind and the face was only partially in shadow. I set the picture down carefully, my mind working overtime.

And then I smiled and stood up. My shore leave wasn't over after all.


End file.
